Sampras, Davenport Advance to Semis

It was a night of paybacks for Pete Sampras and
Lindsay Davenport, each of them conquering a personal tormentor and
edging closer to regaining the U.S. Open titles they once held.

For the four-time champion Sampras, it was the sweet 4-6, 7-6
(6), 6-4, 6-2 defeat Wednesday night of Richard Krajicek, who had
the best record against him of any active player and was the only
man to beat him at Wimbledon in the past eight years.

For Davenport, the women’s titlist in 1998, it was a 6-4, 6-2
quarterfinal rout of defending champion Serena Williams that ended
a string of five straight losses to her over the past three years.

Sampras moved into the semifinals against Lleyton Hewitt, a
19-year-old Australian who is seeking to become the youngest winner
since Sampras won his first title in 1990.

Miracle Comeback in Tiebreaker

The 6-foot-5 Krajicek, who beat Sampras en route to winning
Wimbledon in 1996 and had held a 6-3 record against him, sought to
impose his big serve on Sampras once again. He did just that in the
first set and wound up with 23 aces, but the match turned on a
spellbinding comeback by Sampras from 2-6 in the second-set
tiebreaker.

Facing four set points, Sampras saved them all. First came a
spectacular drop volley that nicked the net cord. Next there was a
forehand return that Sampras mis-hit but saw land safely for a
winner. He then drilled a perfect backhand pass into the corner and
pumped his fist to the crowd.

When he saved number four with an approach shot that Krajicek
netted, and followed it up with a service winner and a sizzling
return winner to close out the set, Sampras delivered an uppercut
to the air that might as well have been straight to Krajicek’s jaw.

“It was his tiebreaker, somehow,” said Krajicek, who couldn’t
figure out how it slipped away. “It was meant to be that he would
win that set. I don’t know.”

‘I Thought I Was Gone’

The match was virtually over right there as Krajicek sagged
visibly and Sampras kept up the pressure.

“I thought I was finished. I was getting outplayed,” said
Sampras, now 14-0 in night matches at the open. “Richard puts a
lot of pressure on my service game. I thought I was gone. Richard
always plays me tough. After I won the second set, Richard got a
little down. The second set turned the match around. I was making
him play. It was a big match.”

The Davenport-Williams match was big, too, but unexpectedly
one-sided.

Williams fractured her racket on the court as her game fell
apart, and Davenport emerged from the shadows as a forgotten former
champion to a berth in the semis.

Williams, the defending champion who was so eager to meet her
sister, Venus, in the final, succumbed to her own impatience and
Davenport’s deep, sizzling groundstrokes in a rout that took
everyone by surprise.

Everyone except Davenport.

Davenport never fell for all the hype over a Williams sisters
final, never worried about her record against Serena—five
straight losses over the past three years.

Clearing ‘the Hurdle’

“It feels great to get over the hurdle of beating her,”
Davenport said. “It was a big match to get through, but I’m only
into the semis and I look to keep going.

“There’s no revenge. I’m going to lose to her again and I’m
going to beat her again.”

Williams said Davenport’s performance was “the best she ever
played against me. She should take that attitude toward everyone.”

Three of their matches were close three-setters, including their
semifinal meeting at the U.S. Open last year, and Davenport knew
that she could beat Williams if she could hold serve, keep the
pressure on her and pin her to the baseline.

That’s exactly what Davenport did, and Williams finally cracked
at 4-4 in the first set, slapping forehands long on the final two
shots of her service game and screaming in frustration as she was
broken.

“When I broke her at 4-all it seemed to deflate her,”
Davenport said. “She had break points and didn’t take advantage.”

Racket Abuse

Williams rapped her racket on the court, but not nearly as hard
as she did in the next game when she netted a backhand for a second
set point. The racket frame broke this time, leading to an
automatic code violation for racket abuse, and for all practical
purposes her game was undone, too.

Another backhand error by Williams gave Davenport the set, and
Davenport went on to win six straight games and take a 4-0 lead in
the second set as Williams lost control of her shots. It wasn’t a
case of Williams simply missing close shots. She was too excited,
too caught up in trying to blow Davenport away with power, and she
never found a backup plan.

“I played exactly the way I wanted to,” Davenport said. “I
was aggressive when I needed to be. She thinks she didn’t play
well. I thought I played well to make her not play well.”

Williams never quit, and saved five match points to hold serve
to 5-2, but that was her last stand. Never broken in the match,
Davenport served it out in the next game.

“She plays it very simple, but she doesn’t make a lot of stupid
errors,” Huber said.

Sister Act on Hold

Williams insisted that she and Venus, the Wimbledon champion who
will play Martina Hingis in the other semifinal on Friday, will be
in a Grand Slam final together some day.

Told that Hingis and Davenport had a discussion about not
wanting to see an all-Williams final, Serena said she wasn’t
surprised.

“Not at all,” she said. “That’s the way a lot of people would
want it. I’m sure a lot of people never want to see an all-Williams
final. It’s going to happen in the future inevitably. Nobody’s
going to be able to stop it.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t pull my end up this year. I’m going to
do my utmost to make sure it happens ... because that just what I
would like. Obviously, no one would want to see an all-Williams
final because everyone doesn’t really like us. That’s just the way
it is.”

Pressed about why she thought the other players might not like
them, Williams got annoyed, said “I don’t know,” and abruptly
walked out of the news conference.

Hewitt, seeded No. 9, beat Frenchman Arnaud Clement 6-2, 6-4,
6-3 Wednesday to become the youngest men’s semifinalist since
Sampras during his title run in 1990. Sampras was also 19 at the
time, but five months younger.

With four tour titles this year and a victory over Sampras on
the grass at Queen’s Club just before Wimbledon, Hewitt is hardly a
surprise to have gone this far at the open. Yet, he said he didn’t
believe at the start that he had a real shot of winning his first
Grand Slam title.

“I didn’t come here to win it,” he said. “It would probably
have been a bit stupid for me to come out and say, ‘I’m going to
win the tournament’ when I haven’t made the quarterfinals of a
Grand Slam going into this event.

“That’s not really realistic coming here and saying I’m going
to knock off Agassi, Sampras, Krajicek, whoever, win this
tournament (against) all these great champions who have been in
that situation before. I definitely gave myself a chance of making
the second week, being seeded here, knowing that these courts do
suit my game, with the humidity and the conditions. But it really
has been a bonus to make it through to the semifinals now.”